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Guest's blog

New blog by Holly Dillon. Collecting is essential for the study of most invertebrate taxa because most of them are so small they require microscopic examination to accurately identify them to species level. Many people think this seems a bit backwards because we have to kill things in order to study them and, in the current biodiversity crisis, surely killing things is the last thing we should be doing? This is not necessarily the case when it comes to invertebrates.

BioLink's trainee, Holly Dillon writes: "One thing I’ve realised from attending the Biolinks courses over the past few months is that it’s not always the collection of specimens or microscopic examination that puts people off invertebrate ID, some people seem to almost have a mental block and feel out of depth whenever any binomial names (or Latin/scientific names) are mentioned. Binomial nomenclature is a formal system for naming species and it was put in place to avoid confusion, not cause it." Check out Holly's new glossary that explains some more of these commonly used Latin and Greek words and their translations.

Guest blog by Maria Longley.London Recorders’ Day is a 1-day event to celebrate wildlife recording in London happening on the 10th of November 2018. It is collaboratively organised by GiGL, FSC, and NHM. Our keynote address this year will be from David Lindo who many of us know as the Urban Birder. As a keen birder and someone with many years of experience of wildlife recording we thought he was the perfect person to kick start the day of celebrating recording in London.

Guest blog by Roger Morris. There is fierce competition for jobs in conservation, so the big question is ‘how to make yourself stand out from the crowd?’ The answer is to put yourself in the shoes of the team tasked with sifting all those applications. I used to do this job as part of recruiting new staff, and it was incredibly difficult.

Guest blog by Martin Harvey. The BioLinks project has taken a fresh look at how we can encourage people to follow a pathway towards expertise in some of the more neglected insect groups. This pathway starts with the “Learn to love ...” courses, which give people an introduction to a species group and its natural history, without going too far into complex technical terms and concepts.

Guest blog by Matt Davies. I like maps. I always have. I can thank both my father, a town planner, and the Scouts for nurturing my interest. With such a background, it’s no surprise that that during my university degrees I developed an interest in GIS!